DISTINCTION BETWEEN SPIRITUALITY and SCIENCE

A lot of people think that spirituality can never be a part of practical wisdom. They feel that it is hocus-pocus and is used only to defraud people by making them fools. Religion has since long been the whipping horse of all reformers since most rituals which aim at making distinction between man and man, man and woman, priests and other classes, all have originated from religious practices. Charlatans, who have made money by sowing the seeds of superstitions in the minds of simple folk, have also been criticized majorly by the reformers. Even highly educated people come in the list of people who are swayed by rituals, superstitions and man-made distinctions based on religion. Is it any wonder then that some people feel that Spirituality (which is the endgame of all religion) is any better? Scientists feel that only theirs is an exact science which aims at exploring and understanding the universe and all in it.

While this is not arguable, what is arguable is the fact that only science (and all its related fields) seeks to do this. Spiritualism too is a field which aims at exploring and understanding the unknown.

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But there is a distinction between the two.

When a person dies, if you look at the body you would feel sometimes that this person could get up any minute … the outer body looks perfect. So what is missing, why is it that the person died? A person believing in only science would tell you the reason for death, ie. his heart stopped functioning, there was internal hemorrhage, the brain did not function, etc. A spiritualist would simply say that the soul has escaped the body. Science aims at the physical body; spiritualism aims at that unknown element (soul) which moves the body, which causes it to be alive.

A person who is sleeping, dreams. In that dream like state, who is the witness, the seer? Who is the controller of all actions in those dreams? It can’t be that person who is sleeping and thus inert … it has to be some other element. Science does research to understand the mind patterns in the rapid eye movement stage, tries to link physical experiences with dreams; spirituality points to the sub-conscious, the seer.

When a person speaks, it comes out in the form of words. But before that sound comes out, the words are already played in the mind. Long before those words are played in the mind, they are already felt in the subconscious. And before the subconscious becomes aware of those feelings, our collective memory of all our past lives or our conditioning comes into play, albeit, without our knowledge. Science takes care of the sound and mind (psychology); spirituality takes care of the subconscious and collective memories which are beyond common knowledge.

In our everyday life, we have a continuous stream of thoughts, actions and words. Science does research into all this – our thoughts, actions and words. Spirituality on the other hand, works on that which is beyond this – silence; silence of thoughts, silence between two words and that silence which results in stopping the action before it is done.

All conveniences of everyday use are a gift of science. Man needs all this to lead a normal content life, or so he thinks. When all this does not give him solace, spiritualism comes to play. Spiritualism gives him peace of mind.

When somebody close to you is only the verge of dying or living the life of a vegetable, you do your best medically for that person. That is science helping you. But when you wish that the person either dies or lives a healthy life, and you want to say it to somebody, without being (mis)judged, that somebody, that close confidante is God (spirituality at play here).

Since times immemorial man has always wondered whether there are other universes, other people ‘out there’. Finding out about that, doing research on all that, is the work of science. To explain it, science takes the help of any of its branches like astronomy, physics, etc. Spirituality takes the relatively easy way out … it just believes. And to explain this belief, it sometimes takes the help of religion, talks about planets as Gods, talks about souls, spirits, angels, etc. … it talks about creation and destruction as never-ending.

In simple words science looks at all those areas which are visible at some point of time or the other. Spirituality on the other hand looks at all those areas which remain invisible. Science works on the five senses and common sense. Spirituality works on the hidden senses (like the soul and the conscience) with extra-ordinary sense.